Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 644) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to permanently extend and expand the charitable deduction for contributions of food inventory, and providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 636) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to permanently extend increased expensing limitations, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 101 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

On Tuesday, the Committee on Rules met and reported a rule for consideration of two important pieces of tax legislation, H.R. 644 and H.R. 636.

The resolution provides a closed rule for consideration of each bill and provides for 90 minutes of debate equally divided between the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Ways and Means on each bill. In addition, the rule provides for a motion to recommit on each bill.

Mr. Speaker, most of my colleagues will remember the House's consideration of H.R. 5771, the Tax Increase Prevention Act of 2014, in December of last year. At that time, more than 50 individual tax extenders were retroactively extended for the 2014 tax year, giving businesses just 12 days to make complicated investment decisions. That is no way to run a business.

Every time I am at home I hear from Oklahomans who either work for or own small businesses. Without fail, they tell me that certainty is what they need most from Washington. But too often Washington tells Americans who operate and work in small businesses to ``trust us.'' We promise to extend X or Y or Z tax provision indefinitely.

Unfortunately, those Americans can't take that to the bank. They can't take our word that we will actually be able to deliver on the promises made by Congress. The only thing they can rely on is the law. If our tax laws expire every year, it injects an uncertainty into the business environment that inhibits economic growth.

Even though we were able to retroactively extend those tax provisions at the end of last year, they are already expired again. Instead of continuing this cycle of uncertainty, it is important to put these tax cuts in place early so that we don't end up in a situation like we did last year.

I applaud Chairman Ryan for beginning early with provisions we all agree on.

This rule will provide for consideration of permanent extension of seven different tax provisions, provisions like section 179 expensing and provisions like extending the deduction of IRA distributions to charities. All of us, Republicans and Democrats, have supported these measures in the past, at least on a temporary basis. These are tax provisions that we retroactively extended less than 2 months ago. Why shouldn't we make these popular tax provisions permanent and do it now, not retroactively late in the year?

Mr. Speaker, some have criticized this legislation because it ``isn't paid for.'' I think Chairman Ryan said it best in the Rules Committee on Tuesday. These are provisions of the Tax Code which we routinely extend, year after year. They are effectively part of the existing Tax Code. Permanently reauthorizing them reflects the policy this country has maintained for years, under both Republican and Democratic administrations and Congress. And doing so provides business with the certainty that they desperately seek.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, I want to take a few moments to note that just as we have had to examine and pare back the discretionary side of the budget, we need to examine and pare back the tax side of the budget. There are over 200 tax expenditures--or spending on the ``tax side'' of the ledger--that, if all are extended, will cost the Federal Government more than $12 trillion over the next 10 years. Many of these provisions are worthy, but many others should clearly be eliminated. The sheer complexity of the Tax Code and associated regulations should push us towards reforms so that our Tax Code works for us all in the 21st century.

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend Chairman Ryan for beginning this process in earnest and look forward to the consideration of additional measures at the appropriate time.

I urge support for the rule and the underlying legislation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

My good friend from Massachusetts covered a lot of ground. I am not going to try to deal with every single issue that he raised in my response. But let me point out a couple of facts.

First, my friend is concerned about the deficit, and I appreciate that. But this is a rather new, novel idea for Democrats. When the Republican majority actually took power, the deficit was $1.4 trillion a year. It is under $500 billion, which is still way too high. But this majority has taken deficits extremely seriously and has lowered them every year.

Second, my friend is worried about the cost of these tax cuts. That is amazing to me because when they were in the majority, they routinely extended these same tax credits without paying for them year after year after year. So the sudden conversion to paying for tax cuts is new and remarkable and probably worth some consideration.

Third, my friend is worried about this coming to the floor under a closed rule. Frankly, tax legislation always comes to the floor under a closed rule. It is pretty hard to make calculations otherwise. And that was true with Democrats. It is true with Republicans. In this particular case, I am informed that the minority was offered a chance to submit an alternative proposal in the form of an amendment and chose not to exercise that right. That is certainly their right. But if they wanted an alternative, it could have been made in order. They chose not to do that.

My friend raised the issue of Homeland Security. And on this, frankly, we all are concerned. I think all Americans are worried. I think where we disagree is, this House has acted. It has fully funded and passed, and we are waiting on the Senate to do something.

Now, what is happening in the Senate? My friend alluded to the fact that the Republicans were somehow responsible for this in the Senate. As he well knows, the Republicans on three occasions have tried to bring the bill that we passed in this Chamber to the floor for consideration. The Democratic majority on all three occasions have kept them from reaching the 60 votes that Senate rules require. Why? Because they simply don't want to vote on anything.

We lived through 4 years of a Democratic majority that never brought appropriations bills to the floor. They have already had more votes under the Republican leadership in the other body in a matter of weeks than they had all of last year. The Democratic majority in the Senate didn't want a vote. The Democratic minority in the Senate evidently does not want a vote either. And that has frustrated, frankly, both sides and has kept legislation from coming to be. That is just simply the reality of it.

We will wait to see what the Senate does. I would not expect them to pass exactly what we pass over here. If they would simply allow consideration for a bill, something would emerge. We would go to conference. We would hammer out our differences, and we could move on and fund the Department of Homeland Security.

But right now, this is a Senate issue. This is not a House issue. And this is a question as to whether or not Democratic Senators will allow their own body to function. That is in their hands, not in ours.

Frankly, I think that we will, unfortunately, see a lot of this in the course of this session. We will send legislation over. Democrats will try to keep it from being considered. I think they will be offered the opportunity to consider that legislation over and over again. I hope we don't see this pattern repeated time after time after time.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Let me return the focus for a moment at least to the matter at hand, the legislation in front of us.

In response to my good friend from Massachusetts' concerns, remember, the provisions in the tax legislation that we are considering have been routinely enacted for years under both Democratic and Republican Congresses and Democratic and Republican administrations.

They are so automatic that they are essentially part of the existing Tax

Code. Frankly, I predict once we get to the legislation, probably we will have dozens of my friend's colleagues vote in favor of these. That certainly was the case last year when similar provisions were brought to the floor. There will be a lot of Democratic votes for the very bills that are under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I agree with my friend. We do need a larger overhaul of the entire tax system. He is totally correct at that. We made some progress in that regard last year. I have no doubt that is exactly Mr. Ryan's intent.

The reason to act on these measures and others like them now that will be part of any final package is to simply give our fellow Americans--businesses, workers, and people that want to make charitable contributions--tax certainty early in the year, so they can go ahead and make their actions knowing that this legislation is in place.

I am not convinced that none of these will be taken up by the other side in the other Chamber. We will see. It is an unpredictable body, but we will see.

Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment my friend from New York, the gentlewoman who is the ranking member on Appropriations. We have gotten 95 percent or so of government funded in large part due to her efforts in conjunction with our colleague, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and she was a big reason that that got done and got done in a bipartisan manner.

We passed legislation across this floor with the gentlelady's help, quite frankly. So all of us, myself included, owe you a debt in that regard.

I do point out that the legislation on homeland--we have acted on that. Now, my friends have said, Well, perhaps you should sue the President. That is a good suggestion. About 30-odd States are doing that right now.

He is in court because the action he took, in their view, is going to cost them millions and millions of dollars. My personal view is perhaps the House should somehow associate itself with that lawsuit. That is not my decision to make, but I think that is an appropriate thing to do.

Mr. Speaker, this was an action that was extraordinarily provocative by the President. The President has a long history of using immigration as a political issue rather than viewing it as a problem to be solved.

When he ran for office in 2008, he said he would have an immigration bill on the floor within 100 days. We had a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House, and we never saw the bill.

Then we didn't hear much about it for 2 years because he was busy running for his own reelection. Then later, we heard a lot about it. The President said he was going to act before the election. Then he pulled back from doing that because he thought, Well, electorally, this may not be advantageous.

But the minute afterwards when he thought it was to his political advantage, he rolled it out again. So let's be real here about how serious this effort is, but it will be challenged in court.

In terms of this body, again, it has passed appropriate legislation on funding. It has done exactly as my friend from New York suggests, use some of the tools that are legitimately at its disposal. That bill now rests in the Senate.

If the Democratic minority in the Senate will allow it to be brought up, I would not expect it would come back exactly as this House fashioned it. They simply just need to do their job, send something back, go to conference, and we can act on it. They have had lots of time to do this. This was moved over there weeks ago--or a couple of weeks ago.

The real problem here, Mr. Speaker, is the United States Senate, because of the obstruction of the minority, is simply choosing not to act. As soon as they act, I think we will probably move pretty expeditiously, find some common ground, and address my friend's concerns because I think they are very legitimate concerns and very appropriate in terms of getting the Homeland Security bill done.

It is a good bill. The underlying bill that my friend was part of negotiating was an excellent piece of bipartisan, bicameral compromise. If the Senate would simply take up the bill in front of them, I think we could get to the point we could have an agreement in rather short order.

Mr. Speaker, I will continue to hope that the Senate actually does its job.

In the meantime, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Again, let's go back over a couple of points in the process where my friends and I disagree.

Again, tax legislation normally comes here under a closed rule-- almost always. Democrats do it; Republicans do it.

The second point: I bet you that these provisions that we are discussing here today will at some point this year, if not in this legislation, almost certainly--as a matter of fact, certainly--be extended and placed. All we are trying to do is move them early so people know for sure it is going to happen and can plan and act accordingly--and, frankly, dozens of my friends who will vote for this, almost certainly, when it is actually considered on the floor. Nothing unusual or extreme here. It is just simply a way to try to give a break and a little advance notice to hardworking men and women that run small businesses all over America.

On the Homeland Security issue, again, this is now in the Senate. This body has acted. The Senate can literally do whatever it chooses to do. We have had several suggestions of what Republican leaders can do or what Democratic leaders can do.

Right now, the Democratic minority has chosen not to allow debate to occur, not to act on the bill. If they simply act on the bill, I suspect it will change. It will not look exactly like what we sent over. All they need to do is actually legislate.

Now, this is the oldest book, evidently, in the minority party on the other body's playbook, because, again, they did it when they were in the majority. They just simply refuse to vote on things. We don't have a broken House. We certainly have differences of opinion in the House, but at least we act and actually move legislation across the floor and put it in the other Chamber.

All we are asking of Democrats and Republicans alike in the other Chamber is just do your job. Just send us something. We will go to conference with you. We will hammer out a compromise, and we will go on from there.

So this sort of deja vu all over again, I agree with that. We saw a Democratic majority in the Senate blocking action on almost any legislation, didn't pass a single appropriations bill last year. We now see a Democratic minority trying to do, in the same body, essentially the same thing.

So, hopefully, that lesson will be learned at some point over there and they will just simply pick up legislation and begin to move it. If they do, I think we can find a lot of common ground on a lot of important issues.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, let's go back to the beginning of this debate and make sure that folks are very clear about what we are talking about. We are talking about extending tax breaks that have routinely been extended for years--that Democrats have extended, that Republicans have extended--that, frankly, have not been paid for in the past, and that will most certainly be part of any overall package that is enacted.

We are simply saying let's make sure people that have a benefit bestowed in these areas know and can calculate and make business decisions accordingly early in the year instead of scramble at the very end. It simply makes sense, and it is simply fair to the American taxpayer. That is important to remember.

Also, it is important to remember that the underlying legislation is extremely bipartisan. The only part of this process that will be partisan is the normal procedural part, where it is almost a sort of shirts and skins game where Democrats all vote against a Republican rule--we do exactly the same thing when we are in the minority--and our people mostly vote for that rule, and I think probably certainly will today; and then we will actually have a vote on the underlying legislation, and many, many, many Democrats will join almost all Republicans and vote for it.

So we think it is a good piece of legislation, and we also think it is part of an incremental effort. We think Mr. Ryan will bring other bills like this to the floor but also will, in time, make an overall proposal on tax reform. Then we will see if our friends are really serious about engaging in that debate. I am not questioning my friends on this side of the aisle, but I do have some serious questions about how serious the President is about tax reform. But, again, we will see.

Finally, we have had a great deal of discussion about Homeland Security. And, again, just to be clear, this House has acted and fully funded Homeland Security. The Homeland is done. It is funded through the end of this month. We have got legislation that we have agreed on.

The President, in my view, provoked a crisis by acting unilaterally. That view, by the way, is not just a narrow view by a few people. He is in court defending his actions. Over 30 States are involved in a lawsuit against him because of what he did. He knew it was going to be controversial. He waited until after the elections to try and pick a fight and I think probably try to cover up a little bit for how poorly his side did in that particular election, anything to change the topic.

So now we are here.

The House has reacted to that, I think, in an appropriate form and has sent it to the Senate. In the Senate, the Democratic minority has simply refused to allow any debate. They can do that under the Senate rules--and I respect that process--but let's be clear about who is stopping the funding of Homeland Security. It is actually Democratic Senators, who won't allow a measure to even come up for debate.

Now, if that measure came up for debate, what this House passed, I would suspect that it would be changed in some ways. I do not expect the Senate will do exactly what we suggest and think they should do. They very seldom do that. If they will just do that, we will arrive at, I think, a common agreement; we will go to conference; there will be the normal give-and-take in politics; and we will reach an agreement.

My friend is concerned about the openness of the process. Again, I point out that, when we deal with this kind of legislation, it is normally a closed rule, and this has been pretty routine stuff. I commit to my friend on this point: we will actually be much more open in the appropriations process than my friends were when they were in the majority. They almost never brought bills to the floor, and when they did, they actually, for the first time, brought them under closed rules. We will bring our bills to the floor under open rules, and that is normal in the appropriations process. I think, if you actually look at the record of the two majorities side by side, you will find that there were a lot more amendments made available to Members of both sides under a Republican majority than has been the case when my friends were most recently in power.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, again, I want to point out that the legislation in question is routine, and it should be enacted on a bipartisan basis. We have the potential, if the Senate will act, to actually put it on the President's desk. I don't think he would actually veto it if we did, but, again, that would be his call.

I urge my colleagues to support this rule and the underlying legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole) for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

(Mr. McGOVERN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, today we are considering two pieces of tax legislation under closed rules. These mark our 10th and 11th closed rules in the first 6 weeks of the 114th Congress. Sadly, this has become the standard operating procedure in the Republican House.

In 2011, when Republicans took the majority, Speaker Boehner promised ``the right to a robust debate in open process.'' He promised many open rules. Instead, we have just ended the most closed Congress in history. And if these past 6 weeks are any indication of where we are headed, this leadership seems intent on breaking its own record for denying open debate on the House floor.

I also want to point out that the Department of Homeland Security runs out of money February 28, 16 days from now. Press reports indicate that the Republican leadership is scrambling to gather the votes necessary to pass a bill.

Well, Mr. Speaker, I have some advice for my friends in the majority. Instead of yelling, instead of pouting and swearing, bring to the floor a clean Department of Homeland Security Appropriations bill, the bipartisan negotiated compromise that has been ready to go since last November. This is a bill that could and should be sent to the President as quickly as possible, especially considering the international and national homeland security situation facing the U.S. and the world at this very, very moment.

So I have to say that I am a little perplexed as to why the majority has chosen this week to bring to the floor a package of tax breaks that are not paid for, that are going nowhere, 5 legislative days before the Department of Homeland Security is going to be forced to shut down because of Republican dithering.

And I say going nowhere because Senate Republicans have said quite clearly that these bills will not likely be considered in committee or by the full Senate. Let me repeat that. These bills are going nowhere because of the Republicans in the Senate. They have made it pretty clear.

So the clock is ticking on funding our Homeland Security programs, Mr. Speaker. Are the Republican leaders planning to let the clock run out, planning to create another crisis?

We should be debating a clean Department of Homeland Security bill right now. We ought to vote in a bipartisan way to pass it, have the Senate do the same thing, send it right to the President, and actually accomplish something.

I am also concerned, Mr. Speaker, with the partisan approach taken by the Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee in advancing these particular tax measures. We went through this same exercise last year

with a similar set of bills, only to pass in the final weeks of the 113th Congress a 1-year comprehensive ``tax extenders'' package. The Republican leadership in the House is setting the stage for a similar confrontation this year, instead of working in a productive and bipartisan manner on comprehensive tax reform.

That is something that the American people, Democrats and Republicans, all want. They want us to be working on it, and they want us to pass a bipartisan comprehensive tax reform bill.

The seven tax provisions before us today, packaged into two bills, will add more than $93 billion to the deficit. There was a time when my Republican friends actually cared about the deficit. I guess those days are gone.

While I support the goals of many of the provisions contained in these bills, I cannot vote for legislation that targets only a handful of tax provisions, chooses to elevate them and make them permanent at the expense of other tax priorities, and then refuses to pay for them-- absolutely refuses to pay for them.

This Republican package does nothing, absolutely nothing to address key priorities, like the work opportunity tax credit and the new markets tax credit. It fails to address the long-term status of the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit that work to reduce poverty.

If these tax provisions are allowed to expire in 2017, as currently scheduled, many working poor families would lose their child tax credit, and many low-income married couples and larger families would see a cut in their EITC. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that if the EITC and the CTC provisions were to expire, ``more than 16 million people in low-income working families, including 8 million children, would fall into--or deeper into--poverty.''

The piecemeal, deficit-spending approach taken by this majority puts these working family tax provisions at risk.

Mr. Speaker, I was pleased to see members of the Republican leadership at D.C. Central Kitchen the other day talking about hunger. D.C. Central Kitchen does incredible work to feed the hungry and help people get back on their feet.

But count me as a little skeptical because time after time after time after time, Republicans have targeted poor people and the programs that help them.

If my friends on the other side of the aisle are serious about ending hunger, they need to do much more than encourage donations to food banks. First and foremost, they should stop targeting SNAP, the Nation's premier antihunger program. They should stop treating SNAP as an ATM machine for other programs.

Instead, they should work with us to increase the minimum wage or at least give us a vote on increasing the minimum wage. They should work with us to expand job training programs and make child care more affordable. They should work with us to fix the major flaw in our social safety net; namely, that when someone gets a job that doesn't pay very much, they tend to lose all their benefits and end up struggling, once again, to put food on the table, find day care for their kids, keep their house warm, and pay the rent.

We need desperately to have a serious and thoughtful discussion about the long-term sustainability of our safety net programs.

The Fighting Hunger Incentive Act makes permanent the enhanced deduction for contributions of food inventory. I strongly support our food banks and charitable organizations that work each and every day to feed the hungry in this country. I support efforts that provide incentives to donate food to these organizations. But one tax break does not constitute a plan to address hunger. And it certainly does not make up for the cuts to SNAP and other safety net programs that have been proposed and enacted by this Republican majority.

So in closing, again, I would urge my colleagues to pay attention to today's National Journal Daily, the headline: ``So Far, a Congress About Nothing.'' That is what this Congress is becoming known as, ``a Congress about nothing.''

Well, work with us in a bipartisan way to change this headline, and you could do that by allowing a clean Department of Homeland Security Appropriations bill to come before us. We can pass it in a bipartisan way, and we can meet the national security needs of our country and actually do something before we go home on another break.

With that, I urge my colleagues to reject this rule and the underlying legislation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Again, I urge my colleagues to read the National Journal Daily today and pay close attention to this headline,

``So Far, a Congress About Nothing.'' And that is basically what we are doing here today.

The tax provisions that we are talking about here today, the Republicans over in the Senate are saying that they don't intend to bring any of these before the relevant committees or bring them to the floor. They are trying to work on a more long-term comprehensive tax reform bill, as we should be here. So we can't blame the Democrats for that. It is the Republicans in the Senate who have said they aren't going to take this up.

So then the question arises, why are we doing this? Why aren't we doing something that is more urgent and more pressing, like passing a Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill?

And let's be clear about what the problem is. There is a bipartisan bill that Democrats and Republicans agree on on funding the Department of Homeland Security. What some of the more extreme elements in the House of Representatives on the Republican side have done is they have loaded it up with all kinds of anti-immigration provisions.

They have decided that that is where they want the debate on immigration, so all of a sudden, this bill has been loaded up with extraneous issues that don't belong on this bill. Quite frankly, we think that that is wrong, and Democrats in the Senate think it is wrong. What we are saying is actually bring before both bodies a clean bill.

What is so wrong with that? If you don't like what the President is doing on immigration, bring up a separate bill or sue him again because that seems to be what my Republican friends like to do all the time, but don't hold up a Department of Homeland Security bill for a political battle on an issue, quite frankly, that does not belong on an appropriations bill.

Mr. Speaker, again, there are only 16 days left until the funding of the Department of Homeland Security expires. It is 16 days, but 5 legislative days only. If it expires, it would shut down many of the crucial operations that keep our country safe.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule that will allow for consideration of a clean Department of Homeland Security funding bill. With such serious consequences, it is time to put politics aside in order to strengthen our homeland and protect American families.

To discuss our proposal, I will yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey), the distinguished ranking member on the Committee on Appropriations.

I yield the gentlewoman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to respond to a few of the points that the gentleman has made in his speech on the floor here.

First of all, about the process--these are closed rules that we are dealing with here today. Yes, while it has been traditional to give tax provisions closed rules, there were Members who actually brought amendments to the House Rules Committee to help pay for some of these that I think might have been able to earn bipartisan support because I think there are some Members on your side of the aisle who would like these paid for and do not want to add to the deficit, but they were not made in order in the Rules Committee.

There may be other ideas on how to pay for this so we can truly have a bipartisan vote on this and not add to the deficit, but we will not have that opportunity because of the rule.

Again, Mr. Speaker, these provisions that we are talking about would add $93 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years. Yes, maybe Republicans and Democrats in the past have extended these without pay- fors, but that doesn't make it right. It just means we both added to the deficit. Maybe we ought to get serious about Pay-As-You-Go.

My friends on the other side of the aisle insist that emergency unemployment benefits have to be paid for, but when it comes to any kind of tax cut, they don't believe anything has to be paid for, so we should have a more open process on this.

My friend talks about certainty, that all we are trying to do is give people certainty, but that is not the case. It is not the case because the President has said that he would threaten to veto these bills if they weren't paid for. It is what Republican leaders in the Senate have said.

Roy Blunt, our former colleague in the House, made it very clear. He said:

As long as the Finance Committee in the Senate feels there

is an opportunity for overall tax reform, I think you are

going to not see a quick response to individual bills coming

over here. We may deal with them later on down the aisle, but

there is no sense that the Senate is going to act on this any

time soon.

When we talk about providing people certainty, that is not what we are doing here. This is about just kind of going through the motions for the sake of going through the motions.

Finally, on the Department of Homeland Security bill, yes, the House acted and attached all these radical anti-immigrant riders to the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations bill.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, told reporters on Tuesday:

I think it is clear we cannot go forward in the Senate, so

the next move, obviously, is up to the House.

Today is Thursday. Tomorrow we leave for a break, and it doesn't seem like Republican leaders feel the same sense of urgency that we do over here that we need to get this business completed.

Republicans are obviously refusing to admit the reality of this kind of dangerous anti-immigrant grandstanding. In fact, when reporters asked House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy whether the House would take up a new DHS funding bill, he said, ``Why do we have to?''

Let me respond to the majority leader. The reason why we have to is because our primary job here is to protect the people of the United States of America. By letting this bill lapse, we are failing in our responsibility.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Roybal-Allard).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the remaining time.

Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, I am going to urge my colleagues to vote against the previous question. If we defeat the previous question, I will bring up an amendment that will allow for there to be a clean vote on the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill. No controversial anti-immigrant riders, just the bill that a bipartisan group of Members and the Appropriations Committees agreed on in an up or down vote.

I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, while I have great respect for my friend on the Rules Committee, and I sometimes get frustrated by the Senate as well, the fact of the matter is, at least in the Senate, they are voting on a lot more amendments than we are in the House. We don't have an open process here. We have one of the most closed processes, if not the most closed process, in history. That is where a lot of the frustration comes from.

On these tax provisions, I think there is broad bipartisan support on the policy. I support, I think, mostly all of them. If we worked in a bipartisan way to make sure they were paid for, I think you would get a unanimous vote here in the House.

But for some reason, this notion of working in a bipartisan way is something that my friends on the other side of the aisle just refuse to do. It is their way or the highway. It is one political message vote after another, after another, after another. I think people are getting sick of it.

I go back to the headline in the National Journal Daily: ``So Far, a Congress About Nothing.'' The reason why it is about nothing is that this Chamber is not working.

There is no bipartisanship here when it comes to legislation; there is no give and take. Routinely, we are being forced to vote up or down on bills that, quite frankly, with a few tweaks and some improvements, would pass. And the bills that we are talking about here I think would pass overwhelmingly if we just open up the process a little bit, a little give-and-take.

Let's also be clear, we are not providing anybody with any certainty about anything. The Senate leaders of the relevant committees that would take up this tax legislation have said clearly they are not going to take it up, not any time soon. So it is not urgent that we be debating and doing these bills here today. What is urgent is the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill.

For the life of me, I don't understand why the Republican leadership can't override the views of a handful of extremists in their party who are insisting on maintaining these anti-immigration riders, holding the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill hostage, and thereby jeopardizing the security of the people of the United States of America.

We have 5 legislative days left to deal with this, and we are leaving tomorrow for a break. Again, we go home and tell our constituents when they ask, ``What have you accomplished?'' the answer is, ``Nothing.''

We have done nothing. Yes, we have had debates, we have had votes, but on things that are going nowhere. Not only because the President has threatened vetoes on most of the legislation, but because the House Republicans are saying: The stuff you are sending over to us is too extreme.

What have we done? We voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act for the 57th or the 58th time, another waste of taxpayer money going nowhere. We voted on the Keystone bill twice, closed rules, and voted on a bill to basically deny women essential reproductive rights that was so over the top and so extreme that the Republican leadership had to pull it and substitute it with something else.

So that has been the total amount of work that has been done here. I don't know how my Republican friends go home and brag about, or even talk about, what we have been doing here when it has amounted to nothing.

Let's do something. Let's defeat the previous question. Allow me to bring up an amendment that would allow for a clean vote on a Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill. We can come together in a bipartisan way, pass it overwhelmingly in the House, pass it overwhelmingly in the Senate. You will all be invited down to the White House when the President signs it into law. We all can agree on it and show our constituents, Democrats and Republicans alike, that we can work together and we can get something done, that we are not a Congress just about nothing.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 101,

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 644, the Fighting Hunger Incentive Act of 2015.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Here is what we are trying to accomplish with this legislation today: we are trying to provide some more certainty.

Small businesses, they have to be able to plan for the future. Charities who are serving those in need, they also have to plan for the future. Families need to know whether there is going to be help for them at the local food bank. A lot of them look to the Tax Code, ironically, when planning for the future. They need a tax code that is easy to understand. But that is not the Tax Code that we have today. Whether we make the Tax Code more complicated--well, if we do that, we are

making their lives more unpredictable. That is a disservice to the people we are trying to serve.

What would really help would be to fix our broken tax system. And ultimately, our goal is to get to a tax code that is simpler, that is flatter, that is fairer for everybody. But we have still got work to do on that front, and life doesn't wait for Washington. In fact, Washington has a really bad habit of letting really important provisions expire, only to renew them retroactively. This has got to stop, and we are trying to fix this.

So this bill would make several of these provisions permanent. Number one, it would encourage charitable giving. Number two, it would help people contribute to charities from their IRAs, Individual Retirement Accounts, tax-free. Number three, it would let people deduct food bank donations from their taxes, and it would make other changes that make giving less expensive.

The quick to the short, Mr. Speaker, is these are provisions in the Code that we know--because it has been demonstrated--make a big difference.

It is so important that we have a vibrant civil society, that space that stands between ourselves and our government, which is where we live and we lead our lives, that it is vibrant and that that space is there to help people in need. Private charity is the glue that keeps our communities together.

In so many instances, private charities thrive on the good will and the donations and the generosity of other people, of businesses, and those businesses are affected by the Tax Code. What we have to do is provide certainty to those businesses who want to be generous and to those people who want to be generous, but to these charities who need some predictability, so they can plan their charitable endeavors.

Mr. Speaker, knowing that this is a bipartisan notion, knowing that the good work that is done by these groups is absolutely essential to healing people in our communities, to getting people on to lives of self-sufficiency, getting them to where they want to be in life, the least we can do is provide some certainty so more of this can happen.

Last year, Mr. Speaker, we waited until the end of the year to extend these provisions retroactive to the first of the year but only for that year--oh, and by the way, last year, we waited until December 11 to tell all of these charities, these donors to charities, Okay. Now, here is the benefit for the past year, but guess what, it already expired the beginning of this year.

I know that it sounds kind of complicated. The point is this is no way to run a railroad. We need to provide families with certainty. We need to provide charities with certainty. That is what this bill does.

The part that we are going to have a debate here, Mr. Speaker, is nobody seems to have a problem when we do this 1 year at a time. Nobody seems to have a problem suggesting that we ``pay for it'' which is, in my opinion, another way of saying raise taxes on other people just to keep them the same when we do it 1 year at a time, but when we say, Let's make this thing permanent, this thing that we do once every year that everybody is fine with, instead of doing it once every year and sometimes retroactively, let's just do it permanently so people in families and businesses can plan, then all of a sudden, there is a big problem.

I personally don't understand that. It makes no sense because who we are serving is not Washington, who we are serving are the people who are trying to survive, are the people who are the beneficiaries of these charities or the charities who are doing the good works. That is why we are bringing this legislation to the floor. I am very excited to be a part of this.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all the Members on both sides of the aisle for their hard work in this area, and with that, I reserve the balance of my time.

At this time, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Kelly), the distinguished member from the Ways and Means Committee.

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute to say I truly, sincerely want to say this.

I very much respect the majority whip. We have had a great relationship over the years. I very much respect the gentleman. He is a class act legislator. I look forward to his support of our coming work from the committee if he wants to be part of tax reform.

I yield to the gentleman.

That was the longest magic minute I think I have seen.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to keep on my time.

Let me ask about the time allotment, by the way. Who is where.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, normally, I don't try to get into these baseline issues because it is kind of arcane budget issues. But here is where I think there is an inconsistency or a problem, and so people listening to this debate, there is a lot of confusion here.

If we were talking about a spending bill--let's just say the highway trust fund or TANF, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families--and it expired and we said, well, let's just extend this bill, this law, and the spending in it at its current levels for another 5, 6 years, we wouldn't have to ``pay'' for that. It wouldn't cost anything. It is already in the baseline. So if we were basically talking about a spending bill here, none of these kinds of criticisms would hold merit, would be usable.

So here we are talking about taxes, and so I think people are getting the impression from this debate that we are talking about a tax cut here, that we are talking about doing something to businesses or individuals and cutting their taxes. These are laws that are already on the books. Charities, that is what we are talking about here in this particular bill. All we are saying is don't raise their taxes. That is what we are saying here.

The choice before us is fairly obvious. Either we raise taxes on small businesses and individuals with respect to charitable giving, or we keep them where they are today and just go raise taxes on somebody else, or we acknowledge reality for what it is: they have these benefits, they have had these benefits, we all agree they ought to keep these benefits, and every year we renew these benefits.

I yield myself an additional 30 seconds.

But we do it in such an awful way. We wait until the end of the year, then we do it retroactively or we do it 1 year. Nobody knows what is going on. Nobody can predict the Tax Code. Nobody can make decisions. As a result, these charities, these families, these small businesses suffer. That is what we are trying to fix here.

With that, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Schock), a distinguished member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 seconds to say: I wonder what the reaction would be if we chose to change the way that the spending baseline is treated, such that, if any program in its authorization expired, then it would expire on the baseline, and you would have to offset the spending for renewing any program. I would be curious to see what the reaction would be for that.

I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Paulsen), a member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

I want to say to the gentlewoman, the minority leader, that I appreciate the tone and the temperament of her remarks. I thought that was well done.

I disagree with the basic premise on baseline. I won't get into the details. I talked about that a little bit before.

So I have some differences of opinion on the facts as she laid them out. I see it quite differently. But I thought that was a good tone and temperament that speaks well to the need for tax reform that is comprehensive. We believe that this helps move us in the right direction toward tax reform.

I won't go to the baseline issues again, only to say I think this is a positive step in the direction toward comprehensive tax reform, which clearly the gentlewoman--meaning both parties--agree is something that we have to tackle.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Roskam), a member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished member from New York (Mr. Reed), a member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy), the distinguished House majority leader.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Emmer).

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Knight).

At this time, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Cramer).

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Costello).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close.

I guess I will just try to summarize this debate in a couple of ways. What I am hearing is, to paraphrase: We like this policy. We think there is a need. We just want to raise taxes.

Let me put it a different way. If there was a popular spending measure that came here to the floor that extended the same policy from last year to this year because it was expiring, I don't think we would be hearing these concerns.

In fact, with Trade Adjustment Assistance, something that is very popular among this committee and the Members on the other side of the aisle, that is exactly what happened in December. The law expired. A straight extension of the law, of spending, continued. It didn't cost anything. Why? Because that is how the baseline treats spending.

I didn't hear all the hues and cries about deficits when we extended the Trade Adjustment Assistance law, that spending program. So we hear all of these cries about it.

Actually, let me take that back. We don't hear all these hues and cries about the deficits when we extend these tax provisions for 2 years. We don't hear these concerns when we extend current law tax provisions for 1 year. And we don't hear these concerns about deficits when we retroactively extend it from last year, going forward. We only hear these concerns when we are giving people the certainty.

So the real actual question before us is: Do we have to raise taxes on other hardworking Americans just so that we can keep them where they are for everybody else? Do we take money away from charities and people giving donations or raise taxes on other hardworking Americans? Or, just like Trade Adjustment Assistance was extended this last year, do we treat these important provisions the same, which is: they are in the Code; they have been in the Code; we want them in the Code; we agree they should be in the Code--let's keep them in the Code. That is the decision here.

So the newfound concern about deficits, I find, is really more of a thinly veiled attempt to raise taxes. I think what this baseline argument is really all about is: Do we just want to have a Tax Code that raises more and more and more taxes? Do we want to put ourselves in this position of just always raising taxes? Or do we want to give taxpayers a break? We are not even saying give them a break. We are saying, just don't raise their taxes; just keep them where they are.

So this isn't costing anything, in that we are not lowering someone's taxes. We are just keeping their taxes where they are, and we are preventing them from going up. So let's just make it really clear.

I guess the new definition of preventing tax increases from hitting hardworking Americans is now a big tax cut. That is basically what we are hearing here.

We don't buy that logic. We don't want to raise people's taxes. We want to reform the Tax Code. And we want these kinds of provisions that are very important, that we know will stay in the Tax Code even with tax reform. We want people to know that they are there so they can plan accordingly.

We are doing 179 tomorrow. We want farmers to be able to buy tractors before December 11 in the year. We want people to make decisions to donate food to charities. Maybe you are doing well in retirement and you have got a little bit of money out of your Individual Retirement Account and you would like to donate it to a charity, we think you ought to be able to do that. We want foundations to be able to make donations for the greater good in their communities. Those are the things we are getting here and, more importantly, we are giving them the certainty they need to make long-term plans so they can do more of it. That is why we should pass this bill. That is why I think everybody should vote for this bill. That is why I think Democrats and Republicans should vote for this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve a point of order.

I withdraw my reservation of a point of order.

Mr. Speaker, I claim the time in opposition to the gentleman's motion.

Mr. Speaker, I will be very brief. My friend got a little animated.

Mr. Speaker, there was a lot there. I will just say this. Here is the question before us: Do we want to give businesses and charities certainty or not? If we would pass this motion to recommit and it went into law, then we will be right back here at the end of the year with the same old problem. We will be right back here. We will be right back here in the same old problem.

They are saying, Let's just do 1 year. Let's just say it takes a few months to pass through the Senate and all of this, then we are back here at the end of the year saying, Oh, my gosh, all these charities are going to be in jeopardy in January.

Let's get off this merry-go-round, Mr. Speaker. It is ridiculous. We all know this is good policy. We all know this is the right thing to do, and we all know that businesses and charities need the kind of certainty that we are providing, and most of us believe that not raising taxes is not the same as cutting taxes.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 101, I call up the bill (H.R. 636) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to permanently extend increased expensing limitations, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 636, America's Small Business Tax Relief Act of 2015.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I think we are going to have a little bit of a deja vu here today because we are going to be talking on yet another tax extender bill like we did yesterday. This one involves small businesses.

Let me see if I can sort of lay out the case that is before us and the decision that we as Members of Congress are going to have to make.

Small businesses are the engine of economic growth and job creation in this country. Eighty percent of all businesses in America file their taxes as small businesses under what we call

subchapter S corporations or partnerships, and one of the critical ingredients to running a successful small business is to be able to buy equipment for your small business and to hire people to do things. One of the important provisions in the Tax Code to help do this is something we call section 179 of the Tax Code.

Section 179 is really simple. It says to small businesses: We want you to be able to write off the purchase of equipment to run your small business so that you can be successful.

Well, here is what happened. For a number of years, small businesses have been able to write off $500,000--a small business earning $2 million--to purchase equipment. The problem is, as of January 1 of this year, that ability to write off $500,000 to buy a couple of trucks and scaffolding and other kinds of equipment--maybe you want to buy a tractor if you are a farmer, maybe you want to buy a skid steer if you are a contractor--that $500,000 expensing limit has now gone down to $25,000.

What typically happens is Congress says: We don't want that to happen. Let's get it back up to where it was so small businesses can plan and invest for their future.

And here is what happened last year. Last year, this expired at the beginning of this year. So, we waited until December 11 to say: No, you can expense up to $500,000 for these small businesses to purchase things like tractors and all sorts of kinds of equipment.

So this is what we did to the American small business men and women of America last year. We said: You don't know what is going to happen, and we will let you know on December 11, and you will have a few weeks to make all of these decisions before this expires. Just think about that.

So from December 11 to December 31 of last year was the window in which American small business men and women realized they had this incentive to purchase and plan for equipment because on January 1 it went away. And that is where we are today.

So we are saying: Let's stop this monkey business, let's stop this crazy notion of injecting all this uncertainty into small businesses and make this provision that is bipartisan--this provision that we know creates jobs--let's make it permanent so that small business men and women of America can plan their purchases.

I remember talking to a dealer of Case tractors. We make Case New Holland tractors in Racine, Wisconsin. We call them Case Magnums. These are phenomenal tractors that increase the productivity of farmers and ranchers. They are also used for construction. Well, it is a pretty big purchase. It is about $200,000, $250,000 for a nice Case Magnum, and it is a big purchase that somebody needs to think about and plan.

Case, the dealer in Janesville, Wisconsin, had to wait from December 11 to December 31 to be able to try and market these tractors as something that a small business person or a farmer could actually purchase. Think about the kind of uncertainty you are injecting into the economy when people cannot think and plan and invest in their businesses because of Congress.

So what we are simply trying to do here is produce certainty so that the men and women on the line in Racine, Wisconsin, making Case tractors can make those tractors and so that the dealers selling those tractors can sell those tractors so the farmers and ranchers and construction contractors can buy those tractors, knowing that this incentive that has been here and not, up and down is there, and they can plan accordingly, so that we can grow the economy and create jobs.

The purpose of all of this is to get people back to work. The purpose of all of this is to recognize that small business is the backbone of our economy, and one of the biggest things that is threatening small businesses, one of the reasons why we have this middle-income wage stagnation, one of the reasons why we have slower than average economic growth, is because we have all this uncertainty in our economy.

We need to give businesses certainty. We need to help them plan for the future. We need to stop this crazy game of extending a tax benefit that has been on the books for quite some time one year at a time or retroactive one year at a time and give businesses certainty.

This notion that not raising taxes is all of a sudden some tax cut that one must pay for is a notion that we just completely disagree with, which is a difference of opinion between ourselves and the other side of the aisle.

And so I urge adoption of this Tiberi bill to extend the 179 limit to $500,000, to make it permanent and help small businesses grow and create jobs.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

At this time, Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy), the distinguished House majority leader.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Tiberi), a member of the Ways and Means Committee, the author of this legislation, be allowed to manage the time for our side of the aisle.

Mr. Speaker, I don't think I will use all that time. I appreciate the generosity of the gentleman.

I am intrigued by this debate and the so-called admonishment from the minority as to how this jeopardizes tax reform and how it is not being bipartisan.

Let me see if I can bring some clarity to this debate. I interpret what was just said as, if you don't agree with our higher taxes, if you don't--before negotiating tax reform--agree to our terms of the debate, then you are not being bipartisan.

Look, when we were in the minority, we made similar arguments as well, which were: surrender your beliefs, surrender your principles, agree with us, and then we can be bipartisan. I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, I was born at night, but I wasn't born last night. That is not how negotiations occur. That is not how you find common ground. Finding common ground isn't surrendering your ground and agreeing to the other ground. Finding common ground is saying, where do my principles and your principles intersect, overlay, and what can we do?

Just so you understand, Mr. Speaker, here is what this is about: the premise that the minority is offering is, these tax provisions that we all agree on, that we think are good, that we think help the economy, but that have, in law, expiration dates when they expire and those taxes go up, we don't think that is good.

And the minority is saying: If these things expire and go up, we don't want that to happen. So we will work with you and make sure that they don't expire on a year-by-year basis. And we are fine. But if you dare try to make these things that we all agree on, that need to stay in the Tax Code, permanent, you are not paying for it. It is a budget- buster. You are being irresponsible. You are jeopardizing tax reform. Process, process, process.

Here is the problem. What we are trying to do here, we are trying to grow the economy. We are trying to get people back to work. We are trying to increase take-home pay. We are trying to honor and respect the hardworking taxpayers who sent us here in the first place.

So what we don't want to do is tell all those small business men and women in America, wait until December, and then we will let you know what your Tax Code is going to look like. What we want to tell the small business men and women in America is: Washington is out of your way. You can go plan, and you can grow, and you can invest, and you can hire. That is what we are trying to achieve here.

And this idea that not raising taxes is somehow a big, giant tax cut is an idea and a premise that we don't agree with. What we are being told here is, if we don't agree with that, then we are jeopardizing tax reform. Baloney.

The irony of this issue is compounded by the fact that the minority is telling us already--in their statements from the White House, in their budgets--that there are temporary provisions in the Tax Code that they like that aren't bipartisan, that they are saying make them permanent and don't pay for them. So they are cherry-picking, selective memory. It is an argument, quite frankly, that I don't think holds water because what we are doing here today, we are bringing certainty to the Tax Code. We are helping job creators and taxpayers and families. And we are doing it in a way that we think is honest, we think is fair, and we think advances tax reform.

The way to find common ground is not to ask the other side to surrender their beliefs, surrender their principles, and agree with the other side, and then you can get along. That is not how you find common ground. That is not bipartisanship. That is surrender. Nobody is asking anybody to surrender, at least we are not.

So what I would argue to my colleagues is, support this. Just show the small business men and women in your district that you are there for them, that you don't want to keep doing this to them, which is projecting all this uncertainty.

The other point I would make--and my friend from Oregon, who really is my friend; he is a sincere legislator who does his job very well, cares very dearly about his district--the argument he makes about tax cuts expiring doesn't jibe with the spending argument he is making.

Let me give you a case in point. Trade Adjustment Assistance, the farm bill, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, all of these are spending programs that have expiration dates, just

like provisions in the Tax Code that have expiration dates. And when these things on the spending side of the ledger book expire and Congress extends them, it doesn't cost. It is not measured in the baseline as costing anything.

But God forbid if something in the Tax Code expires, you had better raise taxes on somebody else if you want to keep that provision.

So just understand the argument that is being brought to the floor here. They are saying, in order to keep taxes the same for charities and small businesses, you have got to raise taxes on some other hardworking taxpayer out there. That is the argument that is coming here. And if you don't agree with that, then you are not being bipartisan, and you are not facilitating tax reform. We just don't agree with that.

So we are bringing our ideas to the floor. We are bringing our proposals to the table. And in the interest of growing the economy and finding common ground, this is what we are doing.

We encourage the other side of the aisle to bring their ideas to the floor, to bring their ideas to the committee, to bring their ideas into the public sphere so we can see where they line up and what we can do and where common ground might exist.

Will the ranking member yield?

The budget resolution reflects law as it is. The budget resolution reflects the CBO as it gives us baselines and laws. What we are doing here are our policy preferences. What we are doing here is what we think that law ought to be, not what it is. The budget resolution is: here is the law, there it is.

What we are trying to do here is fix the law because we think the law is broken. We think the law doesn't work.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Last year, as we remember so well, Republicans reacted to the tax reform proposal from then-Chairman Dave Camp with a ``blah, blah, blah, blah.'' That reception, echoed in the overall chilly reaction of the Republicans, stemmed in part from that plan's honesty.

Chairman Camp had pledged not to increase the deficit with his proposal. To achieve that goal, he played it straight--at least within the first 10 years. He proposed a tax on banks that drew cringes from his fellow Republicans. He put forward a surtax on the highest earners--essentially, a third tax rate. And he eliminated one of the most widely used provisions in the Tax Code: the State and local sales tax deduction. In the process, he paid for making permanent tax provisions like the bill before us today, this single piece of legislation costing about $80 billion alone.

Like it or not, it was at least somewhat honest accounting. And so started a Republican ploy to get around the hard realities of tax reform. The gist of that ploy: take a number of provisions separately, make them permanent, and don't pay a dime for them. Not a dime. The reason? The expectation of needing to raise less revenue in tax reform would allow Republicans to more easily cut tax rates.

Republicans feared that by trying to pay for their tax cuts--and they still do fear this--by shifting to the highly uncertain dynamic scoring may not be enough. So they are further trying to rig the system with baseline games and making permanent tax provisions outside of tax reform.

Not having to pay for $800 billion worth of tax extenders made permanent would make it easier for Republicans to lower taxes, especially on higher income taxpayers, carrying out further their trickle-down tax policies. It would allow them to avoid having to end the abuse of tax savings and incentives to ship jobs overseas.

By massively increasing the deficit--this is so important--through permanent unpaid-for tax revisions, Republicans could later cite this debt that they created as a reason to take a hatchet to programs like Head Start or fail to adequately fund the vital research at the National Institutes of Health. The President blew the whistle on that scheme--the rigging of the system and sound policy--with support from Democrats. Last year, the ploy was stopped in the Senate.

But here, House Republicans are going at it again--before even hinting, by the way, what tax reform might look like; there is no H.R. 1 for tax reform this session--throwing to the wind the statement of the chairman of our committee, Mr. Ryan, about trying to find common ground on common aspects of tax reform, at the same time betraying the GOP preaching on fiscal responsibility.

As chairman of the Budget Committee, Mr. Ryan never assumed tax extenders would be a permanent part of the Tax Code. Otherwise, he would never have been able to say he balanced the budget in 10 years.

So what the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee is proposing now is the opposite of the approach he pursued as the chairman of the Budget Committee.

The bill before us on section 179 addresses an important subject. It is primarily available to small and middle-sized businesses. It will likely be part of any tax reform. And until then, it will be renewed. That is certain.

Republicans control this House, and they control when renewal would occur, absent tax reform, but this provision deserves not to be left out of a tax reform process. It should give careful and comprehensive consideration of all the tax provisions in our Code.

So maybe the best way to expose this Republican gambit is for editorial writers to use their pen and for others to

use social media, tweeting to Republicans this message: Stop your efforts at congressional alchemy.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from the great State of Wisconsin (Mr. Kind), a very active and distinguished member of our committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to myself such time as I shall consume.

I say to the majority leader: this isn't about small business. We favor 179. This is about monkey business, monkeying with procedure, doing the opposite of what the chairman did when he was chairman of the Budget Committee, of trying to rig the system. I wish the majority leader would have cited the entire Statement of Administration Policy. I assume he read it all.

Here is what it said on behalf of the President:

``If this same, unprecedented approach of making certain traditional tax extenders permanent without offsets were followed for the other traditional tax extenders, it would add $500 billion or more to deficits over the next ten years, wiping out most of the deficit reduction achieved through the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2013.

``The Administration wants to work with the Congress to make progress on measures that strengthen the economy and help middle-class families, including pro-growth business tax reform. However, H.R. 636 represents the wrong approach.''

That is what the President is talking about, and it is really sad when the majority leader comes here and misrepresents what the administration has said.

We want to work together. We want to find common ground. The answer today is, from the Republicans: Forget about common ground, common elements; stop working together; we'll do it our way; don't worry about tax reform now, we'll worry about that later.

That is what really this is all about.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

I say to my friend from Ohio, you are running this railroad. If you want to wait until December, that is your decision. It wasn't ours.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel).

(Mr. RANGEL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Neal), who heads up one of our subcommittees as ranking member.

I now yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer), another distinguished member of our committee.

I yield the gentleman an additional 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I shall consume.

Mr. Chairman, we are not suggesting you surrender your ground for 1 minute, not for 1 second. What we are saying is, let's search for common ground, and don't you come here and cut out pieces of it, piece by piece. That is what we are suggesting.

In terms of a 1-year basis, we are saying, do things comprehensively like your predecessor did.

This isn't a matter just of process, process, process. It is a matter of policy, policy, policy. That is what this is all about.

You come forth, and you then talk about wage inequality. What have you brought up here that relates to that? We are trying to get a vote, for example, on minimum wage. You won't even allow us a vote. Give us a vote.

You talk about TAA. The rules apply there. And we could go into the details in terms of whether it is authorized for a certain period of time, and after that, then if it is permanent, it becomes part of the baseline.

What you are trying to do today is essentially rig the system. You want to do it with dynamic scoring. And now you essentially want to take each of these pieces, make them permanent, unpaid for, to put them in the baseline. You did not do that when you were chairman of the Budget Committee.

You talk about honesty. I won't use that word because I totally respect your honesty more than that. I think it is hypocritical.

I yield to the gentleman.

Well, here is the problem: you took the baseline in the budget, and you don't want to take it for this. You want to squeeze $800 billion permanently unpaid for, change the baseline, and that increases the deficit by that amount, and then you use that deficit to squeeze out needs, whether it is NIH or whatever it is. Infrastructure has been mentioned here also.

We don't have the money for that. It is hypocritical to do one thing in one committee and another thing in another committee. It is not only hypocritical, it is a very dangerous approach.

That is our answer. I am not suggesting you surrender for 1 minute, but don't take pieces out of ground that we want to be common. That is what you are doing, and that is why it is antithetical to tax reform. That is why Dave Camp came here with a comprehensive program, and you guys didn't like it.

You said, ``Blah, blah, blah, blah.'' That was the Speaker, and others of you did not like it--the bank tax--so you don't want to do it comprehensively at first. You want to do it piece by piece. That is bad policy, it is bad for the deficit, and it is bad for the hopes for tax reform.

If you want me to surrender time, I reserve the balance of my time.

I say to the gentleman from Ohio, I favor 179, not doing it piecemeal unpaid for this way.

By the way, this is not the worst job recovery. There has been an increase in jobs in the last month, month after month. The problem is it hasn't lifted the incomes of middle-income families. Let's get together to do that.

Mr. Speaker, I now yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez), who has been working on small business--maybe you will tell us how many years--a few.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

We have debated this now for 2 days. The issue isn't whether 179 is a useful provision. It is. It will be continued. That can be sure. It should not be continued essentially forever unpaid for, adding to the deficit, eroding the chances for tax reform, but this really isn't about 179.

The purpose of bringing up this and other provisions outside of tax reform is really essentially to rig the system. It is to play games with the system. It is to try to change the rules so that essentially, if you make it permanent unpaid for, it goes into the baseline; and therefore, after that, you don't have to pay for it.

That is what this is really all about. It means you can do other things like reducing tax rates mainly for the very wealthy, having more room to do that, not having to worry about the money to pay for that because you haven't used the money to pay for the extenders. That is really what this is all about.

It wasn't done in the Rules Committee by Chairman Ryan. It should not be done now. Mr. Speaker, the Republicans are trying to adjust the rules, to change them, so that they can proceed with their approaches. It isn't forthright, and it isn't honest.

They are worried the dynamic scoring won't be enough, so essentially, they are trying to do dynamic things--so-called--with the basis. All of that really is contrary to sound policy, it is contrary to the rules, and it is really contrary to the search for bipartisanship.

We will sit down tomorrow and talk about 179 as an important part of tax reform. We will do that tomorrow. We haven't even started on tax reform. Now, you essentially want to say we will cut some pieces, and we will do that. That is not sound policy. As Mr. Neal said, it really abrogates sound practice. That is what this is all about.

Mr. Speaker, I urge very much that we vote ``no.'' There will be, one way or another, enough votes if this ever got through the Senate--and it won't--to sustain a veto. Don't play games. Let's address tax reform and responsibility in terms of the deficits.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.